Strawberry plants

I am not sure this falls into "vegetable" gardens...... but anyone on here have any experience starting a strawberry bed from scratch??

Thanks

I put in a strawberry bed three summers ago, and they have spread like weeds! I think the birds eat more berries than we do. I suggest you do some research online to see which plants will do well in your area, then give them a try.

Gen, I bought seeds and they sprouted fine (boy they are small) but a few months later I ran across root stock at Lowes and I bought a pack of each variety (3 or 4 different kinds). I planted them instead because they were so much easier. I have them growing on both sides of the house and I am going to put some in that stupid upside-down strawberry planter I bought. They made it through the frosts with no problem and I put hay on top of them for the hard freezes. They are still there growing like champs. They have flower/berries growing on them that I think I am supposed to cut off but I don't want to... Oh yeah I put lots of sand and peat moss in the beds I made for them! They better be awesome this year, OK..

I have very sandy soil, but my problem is that where I want to make the bed is just an old pasture. I have attempted a veggie garden there two years ago, but the weeds and mainly grass just took it back over !! It was a continuous battle - and one that I eventually LOST!

Anyone have any suggestions on HOW to avoid the grass just taking back over?? I considered using Roundup to kill it out, but I really did NOT want to plant FOOD crops in an area where I used RU......

I do have a metal box (actually held helicopter blades if I remember correctly) that I have considered making into a strawberry bed, but it is only about 6' long and I really wanted more plants than that!

I think my soil would be perfect for strawberries - IF I can figure out how to keep the grass from invading them!

Thanks for any and all suggestions!
Genna

Hi gen2026,

Could you use that REALLY STRONG gardening vinegar to kill the weeds first?

Google for more info on using the white vinegar to kill weeds. They do sell the really strong, gardening vinegar because I bought some before.

Gen, Why don't you check out Lasgna Gardening. It will cost you a few bucks to get started but it will sure help with the weed issue. A friend just made her beds using bags of composted manure and humus, and a bale of straw. http://organicgardening.about.com/od/startinganorganicgarden/a/lasagnagarden.htm

If you can't do a full-scale lasagna bed this year, you can put newspaper under your mulch, and that will keep the weeds back.

I'm in the process of making some new beds both beside the house and in a stretch along my fence for berries to grow in. The trick all the people around me like is to put a couple inches of mulch on top of newspaper. I'm digging down for a soil and clay mix where some berries need deeper planting and then layering newspaper. Once the newspaper is down, I'm coating it with a light amount of shrub mix and then putting the mulch on top.

I bought strawberry roots from the local big box store and planted them on top of the newspaper in a fairly shallow amount of shrub mix soil with lots of mulch on top. They made it through the coldest days of the year and seem to be coming along okay with little real trouble. I also planted four little plants in the corners of my raised bed for one of my fruit trees last year. That bed has sent runners all over and likely will either try to take over and have to be removed or I'll wind up with lots of strawberries. I'm using strawberries as a ground cover in fairly large sections of the beds.

The hope is that the little plants will grow enough strawberries to make at least six pints worth of strawberry jam if not double that. The strawberry jam is very popular with the family and our idea of a good gift. Thirty four plants total are in the yard not including any runners in that one bed.

Most people i know,including me grow our strawberrys in raised beds here. They just seem to do better. When they start sending out runners they are easier to root in another container sitting next to the original plants.
The varietys we use are Cardinals and Ozark Beautys. Your local Feed and Seed store should have those varietys.
Vickie

I like using cardboard boxes to get rid of the weeds. I open the large packing boxes and lay them down over everything then I put the frame for the raised bed on the layer of boxes. I make sure there is a couple feet of boxes surrounding the frame, then I fill it with soil. I then lay mulch over the boxes surrounding the frame. This not only smothers out the weeds, it attracts lots and lots of worms. They love cardboard. The cardboard later rots down and you are left with nice wormy soil. I find this works better than newspaper, for me atleast.

"I have very sandy soil, but my problem is that where I want to make the bed is just an old pasture. I have attempted a veggie garden there two years ago, but the weeds and mainly grass just took it back over !! It was a continuous battle - and one that I eventually LOST!"

No strawberries for us now, 'cause of the climate here. Just too difficult. But in prior incarnations we had them. Once they were established and spread, they crowded out just about everything - they were like a ground cover on the edge of our patio. Individual plants didn't produce as well as they would have if optimally separated, but they still did OK.

Thanks so much for all the ideas! I have used lots of cardboard and newspaper in my flower beds with good results - although my chickens tend to get in my beds and scratch them all up looking for those bugs and worms! They have learned they find good stuff under that mulch! ^_^

For those of you doing raised beds, WHAT are you filling them with??? Are you purchasing soil in bags or buying truck loads of soil? Around here if you purchase a load of soil - you have as much if not more nutgrass (nutsedge) than I have in my pasture!!

Is it too late for me to plant them this year??

Thanks again for all the help!
Genna

Note that there are also strawberry plants that do not send out runners and also are very cold tolerant. These are called Aspen Strawberries, or Wild Aspen Strawberries, or Red Wonder Wild Strawberries (or Green Wonder). These are all the same plant (cultivar), and have a Red and a Green variant. So for container or limited space or raised beds, runnerless strawberries may be worth considering because the typical runner strawberries may interfere with the rest of your garden. There are reasons and places to use either runner or runnerless types of strawberries.



This message was edited Mar 11, 2010 2:56 PM

Hi to you. Have not checked in here before but have a strawberry question. My daughter has moved into a small , very old house and the backyard is nearlyl completly full of what looks like wild strawberry plants. They are all over!! Should we dig them all up? Are they likely to be safe to eat? It is so wild back there we are thinking maybe we should just kill everything there and start over with no weeds and decent dirt?

Take one of the plants to your county agent or a nursery for a positive ID. I'd leave them if they are strawberrys but i'm one of those tree hugger nuts and hate to destroy anything useful that grows. LOL I live in a national forest and have all kinds of wild fruit and nuts. Wildness may not be your thing and that is perfectly all right.
Vickie

Good advice CANDO1. We have an arboretum near us and they are always happy to answer any and all questions. I will start from there. Thanks

I planted 50 plants two years ago and did as instructed to pinch off the buds the first year. This year I got twenty pounds of strawberry's off of the plants. We are getting ready to turn them all in to straberry jam in a couple of weeks. They are all in the freezer now.
I cut them back last year and covered them with straw which they grew right up through and the berries laid on the straw as they grew instead of the dirt.
I did have a problem with birds eating them. Next year I am going to put up stakes with white fabric on them.
A question: the instructions said to cut them all back after they are done producing. The problem is that I don't remember when it said to cut them back, after producing or in the Fall?
Can't find the dirrections I got with them. I purchased the plants from Park Seeds and they arer producing very good. Some are the size of a silver dollar, big.
triplenickle